


31. Embrace

by titC



Series: Whumptober 2019 [31]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Gen, post-partum depression, whumptober2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-12-07 15:41:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20978315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/titC/pseuds/titC
Summary: The baby is crying, and she can’t pick him up.





	31. Embrace

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Whumptober](https://whumptober2019.tumblr.com/) for organizing it and [PixelByPixel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PixelByPixel) for the beta!  


She can’t bring herself to pick him up.

The baby – Matthew, his name is Matthew – is crying; he’s loud and he’s sad and she can’t pick him up. He wants her, or at least he wants _something_. He’s hungry, or he’s wet, or… she doesn’t know.

She doesn’t want to know. What if she hurts him? What if she does it wrong? She can’t pick him up; she can't hold him. She could hurt him.

Jack would know; he’s known from the first moment he’s held the baby. He’s a natural, and the baby – _Matthew_, he has a name, she and Jack chose his name _together_ – loves him. He stops crying as soon as Jack holds him, gurgling and blinking his baby-blue eyes at his dad even when he comes home with a few more bruises on his face. Baby Matthew doesn’t care when his dad is black and blue, but he cares when his mother is near him. He starts squirming, fussing, whining, and soon he’s wailing; he doesn’t like her.

Yes, it’s her; she’s the problem. Maggie’s not doing it right. _She’s_ not right. Something is broken in her, and she’s pretty sure she knows what and why.

The baby is crying, and she can’t pick him up.

It lasts for… a long time. She can’t really tell how long.

There is the birth, and she doesn’t remember much from that – she thought it would be meaningful, something to remember. Mostly, it’s a blur of people and noise and pain, and then something wet and screaming in her arms, and that’s when she _knew_. First time she held him, and already he wanted out of his mother's arms. That was a sign, right there: she couldn't be his mother. She was hurting him; she was _wrong_ from the start. She wasn't his mother, really, not in the ways that mattered. She hasn’t been since he came out of her.

“Maggie, why are you sad? Look at him, look at his fingers and his toes and his eyes; he’s just so perfect.” Jack – bless him – was sweet, but he didn’t understand. He still doesn’t. She’s not sure _she_ does, either; it’s just how things are.

Since then, people have come and gone and come again; they’ve tried to get her to eat, to read, to pray, to go out. When they see she won’t feed or change the baby, they do it for her. She won’t, she can’t. No, she could, surely; but she won’t. Just leaving the bed seems like too much, but she’s his mother and it should be easy, instinctive, joyful. It’s not. Something is not right with her.

She’s not really his mother. She can’t be: the baby is crying, and she can’t pick him up.

Father Lantom comes every day. He says she should pray, ask God for guidance; but she left God when she met Jack, and he’s not going to want her back in the fold. She’s forsaken Him, and she can’t forgive herself. 

Jack’s sweet smile, Jack’s awkwardness around her when he wanted to show her respect for the nun she wasn’t quite yet… he was so charming. She wiped his face in the ring, and his cockiness amused her. She took off her white veil before coming back to Fogwell’s the next day, and she never regretted it.

Or, rather, she never did until now. Now, the baby is crying and she can’t pick him up. When Jack comes home and sees she hasn’t moved from the bed, that she hasn’t changed or fed his baby, he just shakes his head and kisses her cheek and takes baby Matthew in his arms; he calms down right away. He wants his father’s embrace, not his mother’s.

Jack feeds the baby, he changes him, he cooks and brings her something she won’t eat. Jack is wonderful; she knows it but she doesn’t feel it. She’s detached, looking from the outside at the man she left the convent for and the baby she remembers she wanted. She can’t feel anything now; she only knows that she’s wrong. That she can’t stay.

“It wasn’t your fault,” a doctor will tell her much later. He’ll remind her of Jack’s words, of, _I know you love him; I know you’re in there_. “Your baby was…” 

“Not my baby,” she’ll answer. “I gave him up. I walked away.”

“He’s still your child, always will be. You did what you thought best,” and she’ll think of Paul’s _We’ll help; you’re welcome back with us for as long as you need_. She’ll think of his promises that God and the Church were here for her, for Jack, for baby Matthew.

God and the Church will take her whole and swallow her, but maybe it’s blasphemous to think of it this way. She will choose to pronounce her vows, after all. God and the Church can keep her, if it means her baby’s safe from her.


End file.
